Summary: After being unsatisfied with their lives, Dipper and Mabel move back to Gravity Falls to reopen the Mystery Shack, and something scary and new starts bubbling under the surface. But the sudden appearance of a third party throws even their sibling relationship into chaos.
[Chp 1] [Chp 2] [Chp 3] [Chp 4] [Chp 5] [Chp 6]
[Chp 7]
[AO3]
Chapter 8 – Model Building
Dipper was surprised at how much of the administrative side
of the Shack was finished up, a little over two months since he’d started it.
The legal aspects of the Shack being a business were set with (almost) no
outstanding problems; the first wave of gift shop souvenirs was on its way to
Gravity Falls in the back of a truck driven by one Marcus Corduroy, working for
his dad’s local trucking business; he had a few contracts drawn up with some of
local businesses, to trade advertising and services; Internet ad spaces were
bought and scheduled to start advertising in December (for their January reopening);
he even managed to get billboard space on the highway that passed by the town,
and man did he not care about any of
that right now.
A bunch of related paperwork sat off to the side in front of
his open but discarded laptop, abandoned on a page about flyer purchasing (a
non-digital avenue to reach older or local prospective customers) on a table
sitting in Ford’s Laboratory, where his workspace had been for the past few
weeks. At the moment he was too engrossed in reading through the OTHER notes to
care about budgets and timetables.
It was incredible how many unverified rumors bounced around,
how often something in the forest needed checking up on, how much danger existed that needed to be
handled. It wasn’t like he was completely unaware, but maybe by virtue of until
recently only being a resident for a few months out of the year, he had never
really known the scale of it. It was hard to believe it didn’t spill out into
the town more often than it did. Good thing he, Mabel, and Tyrone were here to keep
things regulated.
Well, just Mabel and Tyrone, really. It really had been
effective, making them handle most of the weird stuff. They were efficient and
competent; the both of them capable, in different ways, of calming down and
dealing with the troubles of Gravity Falls. And meanwhile, Dipper did the other
stuff. The boring stuff. The stuff everyone hated to do.
It was unfortunate, and frustrating, but sometimes,
compromises have to be made. This was their job now, or at least it would be
soon, and part of a job was that you had specific responsibilities, and they
weren’t always the ones you wanted, but you did them anyway. He had to take
this seriously, as serious as Mabel did, who was building and crafting every
day, as serious as Tyrone, who wrote report after report over what was going on
in the forest.
It was just…
This whole Mystery Shack thing was his idea, right? Shouldn’t he
be having fun too?
Keep reading
non-suspicious 